37 Minutes Flat: Kirby Air Riders Record Falls at SGDQ

Speedrunner Bluekandy tore through all 18 standard Air Ride courses in Kirby Air Riders on the opening night of Summer Games Done Quick 2026, finishing with a time of 37:54 and smashing the previous world record by nearly two minutes. The run wasn't even supposed to go this way.

The original plan was a straightforward all-courses speedrun, but a donation incentive pushed Bluekandy into the No Dupes category instead, which requires using a different racer and vehicle combination on every single course. That's a far harder ask than it sounds. As Polygon reported, Kirby Air Riders' vehicles range from airborne gliders to a star that slides around like a bar of soap, and each character stacks their own stats on top. Bluekandy had engineered specific character-vehicle pairings for each track, routing enemy kills to raise his max speed while pulling tricks like tossing bombs backwards to hit as many targets as possible. The previous No Dupes record of 39:51, held by runner KazuYoshi, didn't survive the night.

World records getting broken live at GDQ is rare enough. Getting one demolished by a full two minutes, in a category that was only activated by donation incentive, is the sort of thing that makes these marathons worth leaving on all week. I love that this happened in Kirby Air Riders specifically. The game looks deceptively simple with its two-button controls, but Bluekandy's run exposed a layer of mechanical depth that most players will never see. It's a perfect showcase for a game a lot of people still write off as a casual racer.

SGDQ 2026 runs through July 12, raising money for Doctors Without Borders. After one day, runners had already raised over $125,000.